The F1 2022 cars have finally hit the track as pre-season running in Barcelona started on Wednesday lets take a look on what has happened across the 3 days.
Day 1-
Morning Session-
Leclerc set the early benchmark and then later improved, the conditions warming up after a chilly start to set the quickest lap of 1m 20,165s, the Ferrari driver went on to tally up near 80 laps and ended up three-tenths ahead of Lando Norris- the McLaren driver having improved to P2.
The Mercedes of George Russell was therefore bumped to P3 as the 1pm deadline approached but completed 75 laps, with Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel in fourth. The reigning champ, enjoyed the highest lap count (8) as he finished sith behind Yuki Tsunoda in P5.
Afternoon Session-
Lando Norris set the fastest overall time in the opening pre-season session, Leclerc’s morning time of 1m 20.165s put him top before Norris improved to 1m 19.568s by the end of Day 1, that bumped Leclerc down to P2 and his teammate down to third.
Every team bar Alfa Romeo and Haas completed a century of laps on the opening day.
| Position | Driver | Time | Laps |
| 1 | Lando Norris | 1:19.951 | 102 |
| 2 | Charles Leclerc | 1:20.165 | 80 |
| 3 | Carlos Sainz | 1:20.416 | 73 |
| 4 | George Russell | 1:20.784 | 77 |
| 5 | Lewis Hamilton | 1:20.929 | 50 |
| 6 | Sebastian Vettel | 1:21.276 | 52 |
| 7 | Yuki Tsunoda | 1:21.638 | 121 |
| 8 | Fernando Alonso | 1:21.746 | 127 |
| 9 | Max Verstappen | 1:22.246 | 147 |
| 10 | Valtteri Bottas | 1:22.572 | 23 |
Day 2-
Morning Session-
Daniel Ricciardo set the fastest time of the morning on Day 2, with the benchmark being 1m 20.355s with 10 minutes remaining, eclipsing Carlos Sainz’s existing benchmark by two tenths of a second.
Perez brought out the first red flag, having coasted to a halt at Turn 12, half an hour before lunch break, the stoppage was lifted with 15 minutes left, but Perez did not re-emerge to complete the morning session.
Afternoon Session-
Charles Leclerc topped the leader board on the afternoon session with a 1m 19.698s with Gasly taking P2 in which dropped McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo to P3.
There was a second red flag of the day but first of the afternoon session, this time being Nikita Mazepin as he stopped with a damage fuel pump which caused a 15 minute stop. Sergio Perez’s afternoon was quite short as he didn’t emerge until late in the day.
| Position | Driver | Time | Laps |
| 1 | Charles Leclerc | 1:19.689 | 79 |
| 2 | Pierre Gasly | 1:19.918 | 147 |
| 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | 1:20.288 | 126 |
| 4 | George Russell | 1:20.537 | 66 |
| 5 | Carlos Sainz | 1:20.546 | 71 |
| 6 | Sebastian Vettel | 1:20.784 | 74 |
| 7 | Sergio Perez | 1:21.430 | 78 |
| 8 | Nikita Mazepin | 1:21.512 | 42 |
| 9 | Alexander Albon | 1:21.531 | 47 |
| 10 | Guanyu Zhou | 1:21.885 | 71 |
Day 3-
Morning Session-
Mercedes topped the third morning session as George Russel led the leaderboard, with Max Verstappen in 2nd and Sebastian Vettel in 3rd, but five red flags, punctuated proceedings. All 10 cars emerged on a chilly Barcelona morning but the session was red-flagged before the hour mark when Alpine’s Alonso stopped with smoke emerging from the back of his car. Alpine then stated they would not be running again due to hydraulics issue.
Gasly brought out the second pause when he crashed at Turn 5, causing front wing and suspension damage. Guanyu Zhou stopped in the gravel at Turn 10 after Gasly’s incident, but the session was once again stopped when he crawled to a halt on the main straight. The fifth red flag was when Vettel stopped with 5 minutes left
Afternoon Session-
Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the week with a 1m 19.138s as Pirelli conducted a wet weather tyre test. His team-mate then dropped with P2, with Sergio Perez jumped up the order to round of top 3.
A few teams run into problem in which they was not able to run in the afternoon sessionWe are back in two weeks for the official pre-season test on March 10th to 12th, then set to return a week after that for the first round.
| Position | Driver | Time | Laps |
| 1 | Lewis Hamilton | 1:19.138 | 94 |
| 2 | George Russell | 1:19.233 | 66 |
| 3 | Sergio Perez | 1:19.556 | 74 |
| 4 | Max Verstappen | 1:19.756 | 59 |
| 5 | Sebastian Vettel | 1:19.824 | 48 |
| 6 | Charles Leclerc | 1:19.831 | 44 |
| 7 | Carlos Sainz | 1:20.072 | 92 |
| 8 | Alex Albon | 1:20.318 | 94 |
| 9 | Nicholas Latifi | 1:20.699 | 13 |
| 10 | Daniel Ricciardo | 1:20.750 | 86 |
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